MirrorFeather
by seventhe
Summary: When is a sorceress not a sorceress? Three movements: one for each face in the mirror.
1. movement one :: mist :: rinoa

movement one :: mirror (rinoa)

The grey swirls around her are making her sick; nauseous, even. She knows that they have just defeated Ultimecia-Griever, but beyond that, she knows nothing. She remembers the battle and the thrust of Squall's blade with a desperate jolt, and she vaguely remembers Ultimecia saying - something. Something about memory, which is ironic, in some way.

She thinks she has been here - wherever here is - for hours. Maybe a day.

- - -

Rinoa is watching her friends through the haze. She has not known them for long but they are already her family, already all she has left. Rinoa knows what family is like; she had it, once, before the Accident. And after that, she learned quickly what family was by comparing it with what family was not: Her Father Caraway. Her life has defined for her very distinctly what family should be, what ties _do_ bind, and with all of her heart Rinoa knows that these five young souls are her new family.

She is standing in a room plated in crystal and mirrors, but they are not all mirrors. Some reflect her back at herself; some reflect her movements, but the body is that of a young child, or an old, old woman; some are other scenes completely, flowers and feathers and darkness and dust. And some, mere splintered shards, carry her friends. Each shard has one soul inside and Rinoa has already paced the room twice, watching them. They are wandering through the grey haze that permeates even this room, each alone, their movements strangely slowed or dulled, as if Rinoa is watching a movie in slow motion. _SeeD, Wandering: A New Motion Picture Extravaganza._ Although nothing is really happening. She has already watched Irvine cup his hands around his mouth as if yelling; she has seen Zell trip a couple times. Otherwise, they are all just walking. Slowly. As if they're walking through water, or glue, or sticky grey mist.

It is Selphie she is watching when the voice speaks. Selphie has just broken out in a jog, a strangely slow-looking jog from Rinoa's perspective, and every time her foot touches the round Rinoa swears she is just about to trip. Selphie is crying in the fog, the tears dully running down her face, visible even in the crystal. Rinoa has lifted her foot to take a step, Squall's shard is next and she is wondering that if through their odd bond she can speak with him, connect with him somehow. She is wondering what the grey fog is. Her foot is in the air, her eyes on Selphie's yellow form, when the voice speaks.

"Time Kompression," the voice says, and it is the voice of Ultimecia. Rinoa jumps - she knows - she _knows_ that they defeated her. It is the one thing she remembers. For a brief moment she wonders why it is so important for her to remember. She knows - she herself hit Ultimecia with magic and blade and Angelo, her angel her self, angel wings flying white and black magic pouring. White feathers, black feathers. She knows that Ultimecia is dead. She knows.

"Yes, I am," that voice says again. It feels like claws down her back, nails on the stupid chalkboard of her stupid lousy boarding school, the one her father sent her to get her out of the house. Wait - is Ultimecia reading her mind?

"Yes, I am," she repeats, and Rinoa loses it.

"Get _out_ of my fucking _mind_," she yells, turning around, and Ultimecia is standing there. All the words drain out of Rinoa's mouth. She turns again to the crystal and mirror - Ultimecia is not there. She has no reflection.

"What the _hell_ is going on?" Rinoa is furious, her fear converting itself directly into rage, do not pass go do not collect 100 Ultimas. "Why are you here? You're _dead_, you little bitch." Something hits her: "Or am I dead too and this is my punishment, to get stuck here with you for eternity? And - why am I in here watching all of them?"

It sinks in suddenly: "Maybe I am dead," she says, softly, to herself, turning back to look at the crystals and mirrors. It's a weird heaven: she never would have thought heaven's walls would be made of glass. But she's sure it isn't hell, even if Ultimecia is there, because they'd never let you watch your friends in hell. And she was always told it would be a lot hotter.

"It is Time Kompression," Ultimecia says smugly, and walks up to stand beside Rinoa. She is still not reflected in any of the crystal and mirror. Rinoa is seething to see the sorceress beside her and wants nothing more to reach out and strike her down, to call up some ferocious spell. She has never wanted this witch's inheritance but for once her shoulderblades are _itching_ for the wings.

"In Time Kompression, we all exist, and we all do not exist." Ultimecia reaches a hand out, and Rinoa can vaguely see through it. Rinoa experimentally reaches her hand out and discovers that she too is see-thru. Oh great. Because Transparency was something else she always wanted to have, along with Sorcery.

"Why am I here?" she asks, biting down on her tongue both figuratively and literally until she expects to feel the blood coming out in spurts. "Why are you here? Why are my friends out there?"

"You are not dead," Ultimecia says, staring at the crystal.

Rinoa waits, but the sorceress is still concentrating on nothing. Rinoa takes the chance to check her friends one more time in the mirrors. Irvine's hands are cupped around his mouth again, and he is frantically yelling. Zell is still meandering, his eyes darting between ground and horizon. Quistis is walking steadily, nothing betraying her unease save her mouth, which is set in one long grim line, like her brow. Selphie is still running, sobbing now, also calling into the haze. Squall -

"They are not dead either," Ultimecia says as Rinoa's eyes land on Squall. He is resting now, sitting on an upcropping of rock coming out of the grey mist, his head in his hands. Her heart goes out to him.

"You are here bekause you are bound to here," Ultimecia says. "They are lost bekause they are not."

Rinoa's eyes are back on the crystal and mirror. It almost looks as if Selphie and Irvine can hear each other, from the way they are yelling and screaming. Maybe it's just the way their crystal shards are oriented. They could be running in opposite directions for all Rinoa knows. They could be running in different times and in different worlds. They could not even be running. They could be dead, and these could be movies. _SeeD, Running._

"Bound to here?" Rinoa asks almost vaguely.

"Bound to me," Ultimecia says, and Rinoa's world shatters.

The crystal and mirrors explode around her and the shards are piercing her like bullets. She once got hit with a bullet. It was in a battle with them, her first bullet, and she remembers actually not thinking it was so bad - the fire spells had been worse, in her opinion, much worse - but then the bullet had to come out and she'd yelled and screamed and thrown a fit and cried her bloody eyes out until Quistis had hit her with a well-aimed Sleep and continued on with the tweezers. The glass is actually worse than bullets because it's sharp and it continues to twist in her skin once it's in, and new glass is pouring in from nowhere, little shards and needles and crystal and feathers and -

and she is back, standing before the wall.

The wall is solid. Rinoa is glass-less. Ultimecia is still standing.

"How," and this time Rinoa's voice is so dark that she doesn't recognize it, "am I bound to you?"

Ultimecia is watching the crystal wall. Rinoa's raging eyes are locked on the dark sorceress and so she does not see Irvine emerge from the mist within Selphie's crystal, she does not see the two of them embracing in joy, tears on both faces, reflecting in glass and mirrors. Irvine picks Selphie up, spins her, kisses her full on the mouth. Selphie buries her face in Irvine's shoulder, her boots still in mid-air. The two are dancing, yelling, giddy in the grey glue. She does not see Quistis look up sharply, as if she has heard a noise, and continue on with new vigor.

"You bekome me," Ultimecia says, and her voice too is hoarse and dark.

The room fades into darkness.

Rinoa feels like she is falling. "Ha," she says. "That's impossible." There is no way there is no way _no way no way_ -

She cannot see Ultimecia anymore, but the voice is still there. "I remember this," the voice says. "I remember this konfrontation."

Rinoa is suddenly anchored in the dark; it feels like she has landed on something and is struggling to her feet. "You're a _liar,_" she says as she struggles for something like balance.

"I kan taste your fear," Ultimecia says. "Your emotions are powerful."

Rinoa puts a hand out for help and cries out as something sharp enters her palm. She has cut herself on what appears to be a shard of glass. Maybe she has found the wall. Now she just has to get the lights working. Apparently being transparent doesn't mean you're injury-proof though.

"And I smell the blood," the voice says. Rinoa starts to get seriously creeped out. Not only is Ultimecia a crazy sorceress with whom she has some kind of bond, but she's a vampire? She wants to laugh at herself: of all the things to worry about, she's worried about Ultimecia _sucking her blood?_

Rinoa is amazed at the speed of her emotions tonight; the fear and rage, distracted momentarily by the pain, flare up again. It is a harsh red light, the scratching sound as a match is lit.

"Shut up," Rinoa yells, her voice as red and raw as the new hole in her palm. "Just shut _up_. Tell me something useful. How can I get out of here?"

"He is lost," Ultimecia says, and there is a point of light in the darkness.

Rinoa bends towards it like a plant, cradling her injured hand. The light is coming from a piece of glass. Squall is inside, still seated, still holding his head in his hands. He has not moved since she last saw him.

"What's wrong with him?" And her voice is a breath and a prayer.

"He loses hope," the voice continues. "He loses all. He is lost."

"I have to get to him," Rinoa says desperately. Squall. "I have to get him out of there."

The grey mist is now visible, curling around her ankles like a strange eager kitty, and Rinoa is filled with new vigor herself. "How do I get to Squall? Tell me!"

There is only silence.

- - -

Rinoa is convinced that she has been in the crystal room for days. She has not spoken with Ultimecia. She is confused and tired but not hungry. She does not know why. Maybe one doesn't eat in Time Compression. Maybe one doesn't eat when one is see-thru.

She did figure out how to turn the lights back on.

She doesn't want to think about how she did it, really. But she had been watching Squall, seeing as Squall was not only the man she was in love with but literally the only source of light in her dark world, ha ha. And Squall hadn't really moved. He'd shifted around a couple times and brushed at the sticky mist but otherwise there hadn't been anything.

And eventually she'd started screaming. She didn't remember what had started it. She'd probably been talking to herself, or maybe trying to reach Squall, or even trying to get Ultimecia's attention again. But it had turned into a tirade, a torrent of hatred and anger and fear and anguish, angel wings and demon fangs, and eventually she was just screaming, raw words in a raw throat, and something came out of her.

It was some language that she didn't know at all, and there was a big ugly stirring inside of her, from the place she knew she kept those damned sorceress powers. She had trapped them, inside her, and although she knew she was making it up it was almost a physical feeling, coming from somewhere behind her lungs, or maybe inside them. Lungs were just air anyway. But she had shrieked something like a demented harpy and the crystal wall had ignited itself, the light from nowhere coming back, and then other lights had started to come on. She had screamed then, a very Rinoa-y scream with her own voice, and the spell had stopped with a disgruntled little groan.

The new light is enough that she now knows as much about where she is as anything. The crystal walls are in the middle of an island of land in a sea of darkness. It's not water - just air, dark air, empty air. The island is not large, maybe the size of Quistis's classroom. She hasn't figured out where the lights are coming from. She's not sure she wants to know.

She'd gone back to her perch before the crystal wall. Her legs got tired eventually so she has spent the last - period (hours? days? is there time in time compression?) - watching her family cross-legged on the dirt. She is aware that time has passed, that she has not eaten or slept or really moved all that much or even gone to the bathroom. Rinoa knows this is strange, but she doesn't know why it is happening.

Most of all, she watches Squall. A sort of darkness has settled over her just from watching him, a chill from the grey mist, which (she notes dispassionately) is beginning to stick to her socks and boots. She saw that Selphie and Irvine had found each other, that Irvine's mirror was now empty. She had seen Quistis walking with determination, seen her start calling, and a couple hours ago the three had found each other. Selphie had literally jumped into Quistis's arms and Irvine had kissed _her_ full on the mouth as well and Quistis had cried, Quistis who never cried. Rinoa is sure they are getting close to Zell. Unfortunately Zell thinks the sounds are from some giant enemy, for he has started to jog, and nervously look over his shoulder.

But Squall has not moved. Squall does not move. He sits on his rock, having given up. And something has settled over Rinoa: an ominous feeling, a gut feeling. It is telling her how the mists work. It is not the clearest of feelings but it is intuitive. It has something to do with searching for the ones you love and having them search back. Something about connections between people, between their minds and their hearts, forming that last bond between bodies. Rinoa is sure the others are searching for Squall but he is not searching back. Squall is not doing anything.

Rinoa could just kill him. She'd taught him, she really had - or she thought she had. She'd opened him up, let him see that her love and his friends' love and Garden's love and all of it was golden and good and Squall had made that speech at the end about _let's all hold together_ and she'd giggled. Fat lot it meant to him, apparently, to have him on a rock, having given up. Her Squall didn't give up. Her Squall was a fighter. Her Squall carried her across the world's biggest and ugliest bridge - on his back - because he wanted to.

She has looked over the edge of the island a couple times. The darkness is beginning to eat at her and she wonders if she jumped - what would happen? Would she fall back into her world? Into the grey mists? Would she die? Would she fall forever? What was at the bottom?

_When I land, will my eyes be closed - or open?_

Rinoa is resolute in staying. Whatever magic keeps her alive and nourished is doing so for a reason. So she will sit on her butt in the dirt in front of the mirrors until she figures out the reason. Her throat still hurts from that word of power but she doesn't want to think about it.

She is watching Squall again, her heart bleeding for him, her eyes angry as hell, when the world starts to fold in on itself. Bemused, she watches the glass before her bleed together like watercolors; it's pretty, and it's something new, something that's not grey mist. In the spiral that results there's a bright yellow line that she knows came from Selphie.

"This is Time Kompression," the voice says, and now she can sense Ultimecia, and that's the most terrifying thing that has happened since she found herself in the crystal room.

"Is that the only sentence you know?" Rinoa says in an ugly voice, because she is scared. Ultimecia only looks bored.

"Why are you still here? Why is Time Compression still here? Why can't I get out of here and why can't you _go away?_"

Ultimecia turns her head, a noble movement, all grace and cold and sheer will. "You kannot. Time Kompression will run its kourse. It must."

"I don't want it to," Rinoa says, fiercely. "You know how to stop it." She takes a step towards the woman, trying to look tall and imposing. "Make it stop, or I'll kill you."

Those empty eyes are still bearing down on her and it's taking every last ounce of will to continue to meet that gaze if one could only drown in the depths drown _drown_ why are her eyes so empty _what are you afraid of_ - Rinoa, are you afraid her eyes will be brown too?

Ultimecia says nothing.

"If I become you," Rinoa says, and her voice is tainted, the fear is leaking through her into her voice, "how does it _happen_?"

Ultimecia continues to look at her for a few brief minutes, and then there is a flash of light as if the sun came up six days in a row all at once. The empty cavern is full of it. The grey mist lights on fire like billions of candles and Rinoa and Ultimecia both shriek.

When Rinoa dares to open her eyes, her cavern is back to normal. Darkness, and stupid wall of mirrors. And no Ultimecia.

- - -

"Do you know what it is like," the voice whispers, "to watch yourself kasting magik you know nothing about? To watch your past self, whole, before the magik drove you krazy? Before your mind was lost?"

- - -

The darkness and the mist are the same thing, Rinoa realizes. The mist is just a tangible form of darkness. By becoming tangible it loses some substance and becomes grey, but it also gains the property of stickiness. At this point tendrils of mist are beginning to stick to her clothing. Rinoa is beginning to think she is losing her mind.

She cannot watch the crystal wall any more. Selphie and Irvine and Quistis have almost caught up to Zell; Zell is starting to recognize their voices. Squall has not moved. If something doesn't happen soon the four will leave Time Kompression for good and Squall will be stuck there forever because she is not there to get him back.

The mist is sticking to his clothes too, but in big ragged tears. It's trailing off his back and the tops of his knees as if he were a statue in a snowstorm. Rinoa has already cried three times about him. Stupid man. She is so _angry_.

Rinoa decides to break the crystal wall. Hopefully something will happen. She is secretly hoping for something cool, like a big explosion that will end Time Compression. If nothing else it will probably bring Ultimecia back, and Ultimecia will probably be upset. And if nothing nothing else, it's something to do.

She looks around for a weapon. There are little rocks in the dirt and one by one, she starts throwing them. They're not doing much damage but they do make a cool noise, so she keeps it up for a while. The rocks she is finding get bigger and bigger. Sometimes they make dents in the glass and mirrors. Currently there is a big crack across Irvine's face. Rinoa finds this deeply satisfying.

She continues to look, aware that she is finding rocks where there were none, but she isn't thinking too hard about this until she reaches down and puts her hand on the axe handle.

Rinoa knows there wasn't an axe on this island.

"Now," she says in a bemused voice, trying to keep from shaking in fear, "where did you come from?"

"You have kreated it," Ultimecia says. Rinoa looks up but the sorceress is already there. Rinoa wonders how Ultimecia gets on and off the island, and if it's a trick she might be able to learn.

"How did I make an axe?" Rinoa asks tartly.

"How did you make the rocks?" Ultimecia counters. "Magik kan kreate as well as destroy."

Rinoa wants to argue, but at that very moment it clicks in her head that she now has a weapon. She doesn't really know how to use an axe but it doesn't matter. She doesn't really know how to use anything but her long range blaster weapons that Her Father Caraway made her train with so she didn't get hurt - but it doesn't matter. She has something now, and she lifts it up (Hyne it's heavy) and takes a shaking step towards Ultimecia.

"I kan save him," Ultimecia says, and it doesn't take a doctor to figure out who she means.

"_What_?" Rinoa breathes. If there is a way to get Squall back, to save him -

"What if I told you," Ultimecia says, "that I would stop the Time Kompression and return all of your friends and all of your time - if you give yourself to me. Give me your body to use. I will fill you with my powers. That is the price."

"Yes."

Rinoa's voice is absolute. She wonders at her sincerity. The word has leaked out before her brain has even had a chance to think about it. But even thinking about it she knows that it is right. Anything for Squall - even everything.

"Yes, I would," she repeats. "If you save Squall." There is a pause, a sigh; Ultimecia is watching her.

White feathers, black feathers. Are the choices ever easy? Her mind is echoing on itself. She thinks she is going mad.

"So this is how it happens," Rinoa says, thinking she understands.

"No," Ultimecia says. "This is not how it happens."

"What?" Rinoa turns on her, dropping the axe because it's too heavy. She doesn't understand. She is ready to choke Ultimecia with her bare hands.

"I kannot stop Time Kompression," Ultimecia says. There is a glint in her eye that Rinoa has not seen before. Rinoa thinks Ultimecia is going mad. "I only wanted to hear your response."

Ultimecia turns in a circle slowly, and Rinoa sees that her feet are barely touching the dust. The sorceress is floating slightly in the grey mists. Floating. This is crazy. They are both crazy. Two sorceresses, one island, zero sanity. Ten thousand mirrors.

"Your voice - your choice. You know it is true now."

"No," Rinoa says. Her heart is full of sinking despair. "You're playing games with me."

She sinks to the ground, her fingers trailing in the dirt. "How does it happen, then? What happens?"

Ultimecia grins, the mad clown sort of grin that sends children wailing. "You give me your body, fully, pretty one, to use as a shell. A vase for my pretty powers."

Ultimecia is mad, but at least she's talking. Rinoa keeps asking. "When?"

"The magik makes you live long. You will live longer than the others, longer than him. Eventually you will kome to me and offer to me."

Rinoa comforts herself by thinking that this all could be the illusion of a crazy sorceress. She doesn't really know whether it could be true or not. She's not sure which one of them she's talking about when she thinks _crazy sorceress_ either.

"You kome to me," Ultimecia cackles, "and beg -"

She vanishes as Rinoa charges her with the axe, swinging like a true novice but with all of her force and anger. Rinoa turns the axe on the crystal wall, beating and bashing -

The butt of the axe works better, actually, and she destroys every mirror. She drives the axe through it all and then smashes the pieces. She closes her eyes as she breaks the one containing her four friends. She winces as she breaks the one containing Squall. But every piece of glass comes down. Every shard of crystal. The axe does its job.

- - -

"Do you know what is it like," Ultimecia asks her, "to watch your former self attak you? To watch the body that is now yours kut through your own flesh and bone?" The voice in the darkness is a hiss, a hiss of steam and madness and sticky grey mist. "Watching yourself kill yourself. I remember the thoughts I had about the evil sorceress, too. And I know that I die. I know the end."

"Do you know," Ultimecia asks, "what it is like to know how you will die?"

In her voice is madness, and wind, and feathers.

- - -

Rinoa is drawing in the dust with a piece of glass. She has thrown most of it off of the island, and has brushed the island clean with her shirt. She doesn't feel like putting the shirt back on because it's dusty. Besides, no one is there to see her in her bra anyway.

The one piece of glass she has saved is a piece with Squall's face in it. The mirrors are still doing their job. If she wants to watch she can still see Squall shifting, sighing. But he is still sitting on the rock. Rinoa vaguely wonders why he hasn't starved to death yet. She herself should be in tatters.

She figures she has been drawing on the island for a while now, probably most of a day. First she just doodled, stick figures and the alphabet and a big crooked heart that said RH plus SL. Then she rearranged it to say SL plusRH. She tried drawing cartoons of her friends too but she's not much of an artist. It made her laugh though, a big scary crazy laugh fit for a crazy person. She was proud of that.

After that something happened, some kind of haze dropped over her vision, and she started lining out a giant circle and filling it with runes, symbols and triangles and circles within circles, things she had never seen before. When the writing started to glow she got scared of herself again and wiped it all off with her shirt.

Idly she begins drawing on her arm with the glass. She is grazing the skin, cutting lightly, barely drawing blood. She draws a swirl and likes how the red looks against her pale skin so she draws another. Two look even better so she adds a third curly line. She likes this; she will make herself a tattoo. Struck by inspiration she turns her arm over and as she sets the mirror at her wrist to draw she is struck by the image _glass at her wrists, ready to slice_ and she has an idea.

"Ultimecia!" Rinoa stands up, still gripping the glass, blood dripping down her arm. The bright red is cutting through the mist, hissing as it falls onto the dusty floor. The dust is thirsty, the mist is afraid. Blood cuts mist: red defeats grey. Rinoa knows she has finally gone loony and she is proud.

"Ultimecia, I give up," she yells, her voice still angry after all these days, all this darkness. "If you don't come out and tell me what's going on right now, I'm jumping off this cliff."

She half expects the sorceress to show up immediately and is surprised that she doesn't.

"I mean," she calls louder, "how can you have my body if I'm dead? If I die now? What happens if I slit open my wrist _right now?_ I can stop you!"

Finally, she hears the voice. "What will jumping gain you?"

Rinoa struggles with this one, but her arm is beginning to hurt and it reminds her. "Well, if I jump and you don't let me die, then I know what happens in the end. And if I jump and die, I know I'm right."

"You're still dead." Ultimecia is laughing at her.

"But I know." Rinoa is lightheaded now, the blood drip drip dripping down onto the thirsty dirt, and half-crazed she makes a lunge for the edge, leaping high into the air -

for a brief second she is hanging in the darkness, and then she feels gravity take a hold of her; she is falling into the darkness. Ultimecia is letting her fall and she probably will die but it's okay, at least she doesn't become a crazy insane sorceress at the end of it. Rinoa shifts in midair, feeling the lurch as her body moves faster than her stomach, the nausea; she grips her glass shard, lining it up against her wrist. She will slice it open, so at least if the fall is forever, she can bleed to death -

There is sudden full wrenching pain and Rinoa thinks _this is it, I am dying_, but then she opens her eyes to watch death and realizes that she is back on the island, in a crooked fetal position at Ultimecia's feet.

On the island.

Ultimecia.

Rinoa looks up, everything draining from her at last.

She is panting from the fall and the fear and her brain is still whirling and her arm is still bleeding, painted red at this point, dripping from her fingertips like a macabre french manicure. She is looking at Ultimecia and trying to remember to still breathe.

"So this is how it happens," Rinoa whispers. She knows now. The knowledge has settled into the pit of her stomach; it feels like poison, like lead. She hates it already and she knows that she will have to live with it for the rest of her life. The knowledge is resting in an almost physical sense. Between this knowledge and her sorcery there will soon be no room for her internal organs.

Rinoa is scared now. She has been scared before, yes, but that is chicken-shit to the actual fact that she actually does give her actual body to the actual real Ultimecia. In the flesh, ha ha. She now knows fear.

"Yes," Ultimecia whispers in return, and Rinoa sees a flash in Ultimecia's face that is unmistakably her. "This is what happens."

Rinoa knows. She must go back for Squall. She must slit these unslittable wrists, break the mirrors. Even if it means that she will return to the real world and, in the end, Ultimecia will win.

But Ultimecia loses in the end, Rinoa remembers. She knows now. Her own loss, her own death. Her own life.

"I - I don't want to know," Rinoa whispers. "I don't want to remember."

Ultimecia nods, once, regally. Rinoa wonders where she learns to be regal and graceful. Does it come with age? Does it come with sorcery?

"Look," Ultimecia says. "Look into the krystal."

Rinoa looks down to her shard of glass. She has gripped it so hard that it has cut into her palm, an arc of red across her life line, her heart line. The arc makes a T with her love line. Rinoa wonders whether this is actually as bloody meaningful as it sounds. Bloody meaningful, ha ha. Morbid humour is all she has left now.

But in the shard of glass is Squall's face. He has looked up at something. She wills the picture to turn in that direction, and to her surprise, it responds. Rinoa sees a young girl, wearing blue and black, and a storm of angel wings and feathers and flowers -

"Yes," Ultimecia repeats, "this is how it happens."

Rinoa bows her head. In her mind's eye she sees feathers, both white and black. They are drifting down like snow and there are flowers mixed with them, bright spots of light. She sets the shard of glass on her wrist and looks one last time. Ultimecia's face - her face - looks back at her.

Rinoa feels her wings sprout from her back as she drags the shard across.

- - -

"In the future," Ultimecia says, "it is you. It is you who drives us mad. I may take your body, but it is you who take our mind."

- - -

She is hovering in the mists, her wings keeping her suspended above the ground as the grey sticky tendrils brush her face. She can feel that time is running out (is there time in Time Kompression? she has never answered that question). She closes her eyes to get her bearings and then she is off, flying through the mists at the speed of light and flowers and feathers.

Squall.

He is the answer to everything, and Rinoa only hopes that in the end Squall will be worth it. Worth the terrible price she will pay someday.

Rinoa finds herself agreeing with Ultimecia. Now she knows how she will die. It is not an entirely pleasant feeling, knowing. She knows it in her stomach along with the rest of the knowledge she does not want. It is an actual physical horrible ache and she wants to tear at her stomach with claws and fangs until it all comes out.

Sometime, in the years to come, she knows that Squall will look back and say _Why does Rinoa stay? Why does she put up with me?_

Squall will never know about her future. She must make sure of that.

"Squall!" She calls through the mist. On second thought she stops mid-air to check the - wait

Her hands are empty. Why had she thought she was carrying something?

Rinoa can feel her magic beginning to fade, but she is sure that this is the right direction, so she lands and walks. The angel's wings dissipate into tiny motes of crystal and feather, both black and white. The motes are glowing in the mist for a couple brief seconds before they are swallowed.

"Squall?" she calls again. When the magic leaves her it always makes her body ache, as if she had just been in some major battle, or hadn't eaten for days. This time it has left an odd ache in her stomach area. She wonders about this: there is something significant about the stomach ache, but she can't really remember.

She knows that Ultimecia is dead. She knows that they defeated her. It is the one thing she remembers. For a brief moment she wonders why it is so important for her to remember.

* * *

update :: ff-net horrid formatting problems fixed, 16 jan 2005 


	2. movement two :: feather :: edea

_This is for **Enkida** and **nynaeve77**, who both guessed, but in different ways. _

-

movement two : feather (edea)

(Ultimecia must have told her, Rinoa knows this.)

Edea spoke to her one day, and this is how Rinoa remembers.

It is ironic to Rinoa that she would recover her horrible future-past, the truth she had been carrying all along, hidden inside her stomach and liver and all her organs (not deliberately hidden, more like stashed somewhere, like feeling a rock in one's shoe: you know it's there, but you don't really know what it is, it could be a rock, or a bug, or an acorn. Rinoa can feel something hard inside herself, but she has always thought it to be part of her powers, and ignored it) - this truth is revealed to her by the woman she considers her mother.

Over the years, after the conflict, Rinoa has found it both easy and hard to be close to Edea. Edea, being the one who gave the powers over to Rinoa, is now a mother: Edea gave birth to the Sorceress Rinoa as much as Julia bore little Rinoa Heartilly Caraway. Yet Rinoa's own powers can pick up emotions from inside Edea like a hungry man can smell out stew cooking. Whether the powers make her an empath as well as a sorceress, or it is her own tenuous bond with the mother, Rinoa does not know. But she feels an angry ache, an emptiness, from where the powers used to be; and sometimes Edea looks upon her with fear, or sometimes even anger.

(Passing on a sorceress's inheritance is much like bearing a child, Rinoa thinks. Perhaps this is why no sorceresses have been able to bear their own children.)

It is a few days after the engagement was announced. Squall has finally asked her the one question she was afraid he would never get to, and Rinoa is wearing his ring proudly. The ring is a modest diamond surrounded by dark, milky, pearly moonstones, tiny little spheres ringing the diamond, dark like the color of her own hair at night. There are six tiny stones and Rinoa likes to pretend that she is the diamond in the middle, the Sorceress, brilliant and valuable yet fragile, like crystal like glass, and the six moonstones are her friends, who have sworn to protect her.

She can name them all: Squall, of course, is the one at the top, her chosen. And Quistis, the new Headmaster, Rinoa's older sister, is the bottom, the anchor, the teacher, who supports her. Selphie and Irvine are the ones to the right, as inseparable as they have been since the day they all were removed from Time Kompression. And Zell is on the left, to Squall's right, Sub-Commander to his Commander, the most loyal of them all.

But Rinoa cannot always decide who the last stone belongs to. Some days she names it Seifer, who has returned and is working off penance under a life sentence to Garden. Seifer is as brash and mean as ever but Rinoa can _feel_ him sometimes, aching. She can feel Seifer at other times too: there is the shadow of a bond there from when the Sorceress was another Sorceress and Seifer was the Knight. On other days she is tempted to name it Edea: her mother, her lifegiver, her root-stock. Her ally and enemy.

(Rinoa wonders what else Ultimecia has told Edea. She wonders what Edea has told no one.)

Edea has asked to meet her for dinner and Rinoa has complied. She has come out to the stone orphanage where Edea has chosen to spend her days. Edea, being done with children and SeeD and Garden, ironically has begun her own garden, turning to wildlife to fill the void within her. Rinoa looks in wonder. Edea no longer has it within her to nurture children but the urge to _nurture_ cannot be turned off, and Edea has thrown it all into these plants and flowers. There are blossoms of every color, wild beyond belief, tiny little trees that will become big hulking trees and tiny little trees that will remain tiny and little. The garden is bursting with life to the point where Rinoa gets dizzy. She is surprised: there is nothing in Edea's long straight dark hair and long straight dark dress to suggest this wild riot of color and shape and light and life. But: For Edea, it has always been about creation.

There are birds also, all around, tiny little goldfinches and chirping chickadees fighting over the seed in the feeders Edea has hung from the trees. The birdfeeders are shaped like lanterns and Rinoa imagines them at night, full of glowing thistle and sunflower seed, and as the birds eat them their little bodies begin to glow too, until the sky is full of dimly lit feathers and birdsong.

(Rinoa will see this in her mind every time she thinks of Edea: dimly lit feathers and birdsong at dawn, a sky full of stars and feathers. Forever looking for nourishment but never fulfilled.)

Sometimes pictures like this appear in Rinoa's mind and she wonders where they come from. She was always an imaginative child when she was younger but it never came like this, full surround sound and high definition picture. Sometimes it is nice, like being a diamond surrounded by protective pearls. Sometimes it feels like madness.

Edea comes out of the house then and Rinoa feels the ache set in and before she can stop herself she raises her eyes to Edea's, hoping to catch the mother off guard once, _just once_, and see what she is hiding -

(Rinoa wonders, forevermore, why she did this.)

- and Edea's eyes are dark, full of darkness and mist. Sorrow, rage, anguish, despair. Despair in spades. Disappointment, desperation. And a feeling of emptiness longer and larger than the sea.

- and then in a second Edea blinks, and turns off the despair, and she is only a graceful woman with her hands full of candles. Rinoa steps forward haltingly to help, for Edea's hands really are full, and the candles are beautiful things, long and white and gracefully tapered. Edea's long dark hair is streaked with silver now, but her face has not aged. Rinoa knows without asking that it is the magic that does this.

"Walk with me, Rinoa." Edea's voice is soft, now. But now that Rinoa has seen the darkness as well as felt it, she can sense that the despair stains every aspect of Edea, even her voice. Especially when Edea says her name. Her hands are shaking as she takes some of the candles from Edea.

They walk along a stone pathway. The stone is light grey, faintly glittering in the dim daylight. Rinoa knows they are walking to the little villa Cid built for Edea a while ago. It is little more than round lattice-work and a pointed roof like a princess's bower. Edea keeps a vigil there, vesper candles lit both day and night, an offering and appeasement and apology to Hyne from one of her Daughters. Edea makes the candles herself in the stone house that used to be an orphanage. They are scented by herbs from her own garden.

They walk into the vigil and Rinoa can feel it already: this is a holy place. Edea's days and nights and tears are feeding it, slowly: and although Edea holds none of the immediate power anymore she is still steeped in grace. Her wishes will accumulate over the years until this tiny bower becomes a church, a place of worship, a holy land. Rinoa can feel its sacred-ness in her skin and wonders why it is pricking at her, something akin to sorrow and despair.

(Rinoa has never been religious but has always believed in Angels.)

There are candles everywhere. The roof is just more lattice woven in with vine and branch and ivy and spray but somehow Rinoa knows that the bower will never light on fire; it is protected by Edea's strange grace. Most of the candles fill in one wall, tiny niches cut into and out of latticework like mismatched stairs. The other side holds only seven candles and Rinoa knows that these are for Edea's own and special children. Rinoa focuses on the fuller wall, prying cold wax out of candlesticks and replacing it with tall cool full white candles. Edea turns to the other wall, murmuring what can only be a prayer.

(There are seven candles but one will be forever unlit.)

She takes one of the lit candles and bends it towards the new ones, sharing light. She takes special care not to drip the wax, though she can see the scattered droppings below the candles, like thrown offerings before an altar. Offerings of wax and fire and candle-scent. Edea, behind her, replaces the seven sacred candles with fresh ones. All her children, burning brightly now. All her little SeeDs. Being a mother is much like being a gardener: fresh eternal joy at seeing the blossoms, and freshly sharp pain at seeing one petal forever plucked.

(Rinoa wonders again that Edea has not given her a candle. Edea has given her something more. Or perhaps Edea knows that a Sorceress needs no prayers?)

Once they are finished with the candles the two step outside the bower and sit on the nearby stone bench. It is more peaceful out here, Rinoa thinks, where the air is still full of peaceful grace and candle-scent, but you can feel the sun and the wind and hear the birds.

"Thank you for coming," Edea says, and Rinoa smiles involuntarily, turning her face up to the sun.

"It's so beautiful here," Rinoa replies. She knows that Edea knows what she means.

"I am glad he asked you," Edea says, with a smile of her own, a small one. Edea cannot smile for long anymore. "I was afraid for him."

"I know," Rinoa says, softly. "I was too."

Edea is staring into the villa, her eyes on the wall with seven spaces, six brightly burning flames and one forever snuffed. "You are good for him, Rinoa," she says. "You were good for him after - after Ellone, and you will be good for him for many - you will be good," she amends.

But Rinoa can almost taste the darkness and the despair and without thinking she suddenly whispers "Edea, why do you hate me so?"

There is a long moment of silence, wrought with emptiness. Edea says nothing. Her eyes are closed now.

Rinoa feels that she must burst into speech or else everything will break, shatter into crystals and feathers, wings disintegrating. "I just - I can feel it, around you, it's like an aura but it's a dark one, full of - well, despair." Rinoa has never had to say the word despair before and it tastes like hopelessness on her tongue. "And you look at me sometimes and I just feel the most evil longing and it's never around anybody else so it has to be me, and why?" The whisper has descended almost into silence, but the candle-scent is holding off the sounds of wind and birdsong so her words are clearly felt.

Edea is still sitting, her head bowed, her eyes closed.

Rinoa knows she should not be asking this but she is about to marry Edea's son, or son-by-heart-and-adoption, and she can't bear to think that Edea might possibly think her unworthy of Squall, she has tried to hard to be everything and anything for Squall, she would move mountains for him, she would move oceans for him; and she is a Sorceress, _she could do it if she had to -_

"Is it - is it because I have your powers?" Rinoa whispers, giving voice to the thought that has been teasing the edges of her mind.

Maybe Edea is like a plant, and the powers were like her leaves, and without it she can't get as much sunlight anymore, and that's why she feels empty.

Maybe Edea is like an angel, and the powers were her wings as they are mine. And without them she can't fly anymore, and she has to walk, and that's why she feels empty.

Maybe the powers were her feathers, so she still has to carry the wings, but now they are just heavy bones, skeletons, a tattoo, a sign of what she will never be again.

(Maybe I am crazy. But maybe Edea was crazy once too.)

"Edea?" Rinoa whispers, and her voice catches on the end of her name, and the catch is like snagging silk on crystal.

"Do you not know?" Edea whispers, but she is not whispering to Rinoa, she is whispering at the walls of candles, the tiny pinpricks of light that float like feathers on a sea inside the villa. "Was she too cruel to tell you?"

"Edea," Rinoa whispers again, as if to get her attention. She is not sure why they are whispering but this isn't something she wants to shout to the world. She feels like she's on the brink of a discovery.

Edea's eyes are open but they are vague. She is looking at the little lights inside her vigil but she is not focusing on them; she is looking through the lights as if she can see something on the other side. The lights are forming a veil, a mist. Rinoa senses the beginnings of a powerful magic.

"I do not hate you, child," Edea says then, still looking at the candles. "What you hear is only the memory of a feeling. I do not hate you for taking the powers back."

This is what she wants to hear, so Rinoa smiles, but -

Edea's eyes suddenly fly open, wide wide open, as she realizes she has said one word too many, and given away a secret she swore once to take to her grave. There are few things more precious to Edea than the happiness of her sons and daughters and this one word -

Rinoa looks at Edea's eyes, open suddenly with madness and regret, and -

"What do you mean," Rinoa says softly, "taking the powers _back_?"

(Ultimecia must have told her, Rinoa knows this.)

Rinoa is staring at the hands in front of her. They are her hands but at the moment they don't look like hers, they only look like Hers: Ultimecia's. She is cupping her hands in front of her and staring at the thin white scar across her palm and wondering how in the world she managed to forget.

Beneath that scar, across the lifeline of her wrist, is another one, more jagged. She had _asked_ to forget. As if forgetting would make it go away. Or make it not true. There are a series of swirls along her arm, thin whorls buried under fine hair and blue armbands. They are moving as she looks at them, moving with the current of her blood, beneath her skin.

(She will never know whether Edea meant to keep the secret and slipped - or whether Edea deliberately let the word fall. In her heart she knows that Edea would have taken the secret to death; but she will always _wonder. Subconsciously._)

Rinoa looks up to Edea, realizing that her mother is sobbing silently, her young face buried in her young slim hands with the silver hair falling down. Edea finally looks old, with the age-burdened hair covering up her magic-stained skin. Rinoa has not seen Edea cry like this in quite a while; probably since Ellone's funeral. Her mother is _old,_ and crying, and even if she has just said the meanest thing to ever have been said in the history of the world, Rinoa cannot take it, and she reaches an arm out, resting her hand upon Edea's shoulder.

This only clarifies the ache, like rubbing the steam away from a clouded mirror. Rinoa inhales sharply as the feelings solidify in her. It is as if she just completed a circuit and Edea is running along her like current along a wire.

Edea gasps too, but it is in wonder, and Rinoa realizes: they _have_ just completed a circuit. And now she gets to feel all of the emptiness inside of Edea, all of the despair; while Edea can momentarily touch the powers that were once hers.

Rinoa can see now that there were no selfish longings for power, no narrow-minded evil glances and plots to revolt and take it back. It is more like a flower which has fed on earth for years and years and now must content itself with a pot full of canned soil and water from a tap and sunlight through a window. The plant goes on, and thrives and grows: but there is something wild about a sorceress's magic, as wild as flowers in a field. Edea cannot help but yearn for the power which once completed her, made her more than human, one hundred and twenty percent. The powers are greater than the sum of their parts.

And Edea is still sobbing, and Rinoa looks up to realize that it is near to dusk, the sun touching the horizon. Rinoa takes her mother in her arms and says "Hush, now, hush, I would give them back to you if I could," all the while feeling the despair run up and down her arms and wondering how Edea can bear it.

There are all kinds of feelings mixed up in it, but they are all different shades of despair, just like there can be many shades of violet. There are faded strains from childhood, both Edea's own and the many childhoods she has shared at the orphanage. There is the darkened muted stain of her inability to keep Ultimecia out of her body. There is the raw, bright turmoil from Ellone's illness. A cacophony of indigos. It is a symphony of despair, an angelic choir. Edea is the angel, Rinoa sees. She is the feather.

"I would give them back," Rinoa whispers, more to herself than anyone.

"You do," Edea whispers in response. "You do, at the end."

Edea sits up, out of her arms, and looks away, into the vigil. The candles seem brighter now that the sun is dying. The bower itself is peaceful, wrapped in feather-light, mist-light.

"It is a vicious circle," her mother speaks to the candles. "I take the powers from Ultimecia as she dies, only to be inhabited by her and give them to you."

"And I," Rinoa breathes, "however it happens, I give them to her. I become her."

"You merge with her," Edea says softly. "There are three of us, three women. Three faces in the mirror. You and she become one. And at the end..."

"At the end," Rinoa says dreamily. The darkness is growing and in her mind's eye she is seeing the birdhouses alight with glowing sunflower seeds. Maybe the seeds will fall and grow tall glowing flowers and the shimmering birds can fly inbetween them in the darkness.

Edea looks at her, almost sharply. _Pay attention._ Abruptly she stands and takes a step towards her haven. She will not have this sorrow enter her peace, her villa, but standing closer to it is calming, like steeping in hot water.

"In the end you are mad," Edea says. "You come to me, and you are writhing and crying, and you say 'Edea, take this, take it back, I'm sorry, I'm so, so sorry.' And of course I have no idea what you mean but I reach out to you and - and," Edea breathes, and in that one breath Rinoa knows exactly what she means. It is like the world erupts into color, but it is not a peaceful eruption. It is like someone has stabbed your eyes and afterwards yes, you can see the color, but it hurts like bloody hell and is also really hard to get used to. Blessings and curses. White feathers, black feathers.

This is how Rinoa learns the truth: it is Irvine that discovers her, she realizes, and has a shameful moment of relief. Irvine and Quistis, she learns, and Rinoa sighs: This is all right, she breathes. That's okay. I can go out with Irvine and Quistis, and Edea.

(She trusts Quistis in a way she trusts none of the others, she realizes. Quistis is so _practical._ Rinoa truly believes that if she is to prematurely go mad it will be Quistis who will take care of it, who will calmly Mute her and push her out of Garden's top window to be pulverized on the spinning rings while everyone else is saying Oh No, what's the protocol on this? Does anyone have an Esuna?)

"You're mad," Edea says again, and it sounds like comfort. Rinoa realizes that it _is_ comfort: if she's gone crazy, then it's not _her_ fault. "You are mad, at the end, Rinoa."

(Edea knows that she has betrayed her daughter; she swears to never, ever tell Rinoa that Squall is there, too, at the end.)

"I know," Rinoa whispers. "She told me. She told me it's my fault. That I'm the one who does it."

"Yes," Edea replies. "And -"

(Edea never asks what, exactly, Ultimecia told Rinoa. Rinoa never asks what, exactly, Edea knows.)

"What?" Rinoa asks, for Edea has stopped. It is dusk now, a long cacophony of indigos stretched across the sky, tinged gently with rose where the sun has touched.

"And Adel," Edea says.

Rinoa shivers. The chills are all up and down her back and goosebumps are all over her skin and her hands are shaking. Adel is _terrifying_. Ultimecia is too but in a different way. Ultimecia is the unknown, the danger in the darkness, the bump in the night. Adel is ugly teeth and blood and claws right in front of your face and ready to eat your entrails.

"What about Adel?" Rinoa asks, because she knows she has to ask.

"Adel is not part of the circle," Edea says. "Her face is not in the mirror. She was her own sorceress and her own evil, long before Ultimecia."

"They made me take her powers," Rinoa whispers. "It was the only way."

Perhaps this is where the madness comes: the dark, sticky, viscous powers that slipped in when Adel was defeated. Perhaps this is what started the madness anyway.

(Adel cannot be part of the circle, for she never bore the weight of anyone else's powers: not until the very very end. But Rinoa would like to think that some of the madness was Adel's.)

"Why do you think Ultimecia sends you after Adel?"

She does not want to answer.

The candles are poignant in the darkness. Rinoa never thought candles could be poignant but that is certainly what they are doing. She finds it especially heavy to see six candles on the wall. Not seven. Ellone carried the illness out of Time Compression; she was well for a while but then fell to it, brutally. It certainly tore Squall apart but it tore Laguna apart more and it was probably the first thing that actually brought the two men together. Loire-Leonhart. Ellone would have died, ha ha, to see them now, Rinoa thinks. They're almost inseparable, even though they drive each other up the wall.

They all know, now, that Ellone was a Sorceress herself, a different kind, a Grey kind, something in-between: past and future, the Time magic. Her powers do not grow with each generation: they merely are. There were no words but everyone knew that Rinoa would not receive the powers. Ellone gave them to Quistis. No one wanted them but Quistis couldn't say no to Big Sis. Besides, Quistis says, as Headmistress, she'll never be able to use them, or else she'll get fired.

Rinoa knows now that had she received Ellone's powers then Ultimecia would have the magic she wanted in the first place and none of this would have ever happened but maybe something even worse would have happened because Ultimecia could have done Time Compression the minute Rinoa's body became her own and then the world would pretty much have been totally fucked. If she tries to think too hard about it she thinks only in circles and she sees herself in every mirror and it is like an endless reflection. A cacophony of indigos.

(Focus, Rinoa. Do not think on the future.)

Rinoa wonders that no one thought to offer Elle's powers to Edea.

Edea, standing, reaches a hand towards the candles, and a few of the flames bend to meet her. "Ultimecia sends you to revive Adel because I resist, and you resist, and Adel was the kind of Sorceress who would not resist." The flames curve as if in a breeze, the current of the river upon which they float. "She knows that Adel will die and be forced to bequeath her powers unto you. Then the powers become Ultimecia's, when you pass them on."

Rinoa notices that Edea says _pass them on_, as if Rinoa will die and give her powers away. So Ultimecia has not told them the same thing.

"I felt her, too, when Ultimecia came back to the past and gave me - everything." Edea sighs, softly. "That's when I knew, for my own powers were mixed in there as well."

(Ultimecia must have told her. As she told me. But why are the stories different?)

(Do we only believe what we want to believe?)

The candles are tiny glowing flames drifting inside the ocean of the vesper bower. Tiny glowing spots, like little floating feathers, hovering inside the vigil like a string of lights.

Stars upon water. An endless reflection. A hall of mirrors. Greater than the sum of their parts.

"There are so many women inside you," Edea whispers emptily.

(Rinoa remembers the day that the powers left Edea.)

"You were born a Sorceress, with your own spark of magic. You had to have been, as I was, as Adel was, as Ultimecia surely was." Edea has stepped into the bower now and her form is lit from all sides by the golden-silver mist of candles. _For I, too, am a Sorceress._ She does not mention Elle.

(Neither of them can remember details but for Rinoa it is the day her world caught on fire. It was as if Edea was burning and she reached out and Rinoa caught the fire herself.)

Her mother is outlined in gold now. Full of grace. Surrounded by glowing feathers.

"You took my spark and Adel's spark and combined them with your own."

(Rinoa wonders whether Edea really thought she was going to die and that's why she passed everything on. Or if Ultimecia thought Edea's body was done for and she jumped ship.)

"But what was inside of me was actually mine and Ultimecia's."

(Rinoa wonders whether Ultimecia was only inside Edea to wait for her, Rinoa, to appear. This is not a pleasant thought. She wonders if Ultimecia _recognizes_ her.)

"And Ultimecia's was of course not only hers, but yours and mine and Adel's."

(She also wonders which one she'd prefer. None of them are pleasant and preferable but one of them is the truth. She realizes, nastily, that she'll know the answer, one day.)

"Our powers are recycled through the years, connected by Time Compression. It is a vicious circle, cycling through time, a mirror with no end."

"An endless reflection." Rinoa speaks at last. They are now speaking in metaphors, in images. She feels like some kind of ancient priestess; the words leave her mouth with little effort, like a prophecy. Edea's voice is dreamlike.

"All three of us, all of our powers are combinations of us three," Edea replies. "The powers are more than the sum of their parts." Her head bows and the candle-flames follow, flickering. They are like tiny birds, heads bobbing, following Edea's movements. Glowing feathers floating in the sea of stars.

Edea closes her eyes. "Adel is the only one who stays pure, in the cycle of time."

Rinoa wants to laugh at the thought of Adel being the pure one but the joke isn't really that funny.

She looks away from the candles, towards the horizon, where the stars are beginning to spot the sky. She is waiting for the lighting of the lanterns and for the birds to come and feed upon the light and shower them with glowing feathers.

"You are so many women," Edea says to the candles. "And only part of me remains."

They are in the garden like that, silent, when Cid comes upon them. Rinoa is seated on the stone bench, staring off at the horizon, where the indigo has settled. Edea is inside the bower, rearranging candles, staring at them. They look like statues, Cid thinks. Two lovely women, posed in candlelight. He could add stone wings and they would look like guardian angels. Edea, his wife, his lover, always the mother. Rinoa, maiden, darling child, soon to be his almost-daughter, wed to his almost-son.

They look so very much alike, he thinks. It is the long dark hair; Rinoa's has grown and Edea has trimmed hers. They both frame soft faces with easy smiles. They are twin angels, then. Angels of Life.

Cid heard an old legend once that was part of a joke about marriage. Someone told it at his bachelor's party. The joke was forgotten almost immediately but Cid has always remembered that there are three souls in every woman: the child, the mother, and the crone. He thinks of this again when he sees Rinoa and Edea, his angelic statues. It is the Child and the Mother, together again.

Cid was a Knight too. He can remember when Ultimecia descended into his Edea and took her Away. There is no confusion in his mind as to who would be the Crone, the Angel of Death.

Three souls in every woman. Are his Child and Mother-Lover one woman, then? Are they one with the Death-Crone?

Cid laughs at himself, and sees their soft faces turn to look at him, sees the easy smile reach both of them. It is Rinoa and Edea again.

Of course not, he thinks. Silly Cid. They are all different women. All they have to do is look into a mirror and see.

-

_Gigundic _Author's Note _after movement three._


	3. movement three :: mirror :: ultimecia

_And this is for **Noacat**, who deserves it; and **Cendrillo**, who will appreciate the attraction of being deliberately confusing._

_-_

chapter three : mirror (ultimecia)

It is dark: nightfall. The sorceress stands at the window, looking out below at the ragged lands. These lands are her body and blood now. For months she has been fighting a war, the worst yet; a pinnacle of all sorceress conflicts over all time. The lands before her drink from her spells and from the bodies of the men she sends out and from the bodies of the others, the SeeDs, who come to her tower only to die. She has fed the land for so long that it calls her mother; it looks to her for nourishment. She feels it, a giant scar across her palm, an ache in her heart. She breathes, and the land watches in anticipation: she sighs, and the land cries in rain.

The sorceress's name is Esora. Already her people have begun to call her _Ultimecia,_ an ancient title of respect and power and a worthiness she is not sure she yet deserves. Esora went to her library to look up the legend of that sorceress, who saved her land and her people by creating a spell so powerful it destroyed everything in its wake. She found that the _spell_ was called Ultima, not its caster; the title literally means _she of the Ultimate_ in an ancient language. Esora is not comforted.

And Esora is powerful. She has fought this war almost single-handedly, and she is winning.

The war had begun right after her last excavation. Esora attends these digs often; the magic in her blood is connected to time, somehow, and it points to old archaic finds, steeped in dust and the magic of years. This time they found some sort of room, a basement beneath the crumpled temple they were excavating. The room was full of all sort of scientific finds, ones that made Esora's blood tingle, like a Thundaga.

Esora herself translates the runes in the room and puzzles over their meaning. _Junction Machine Ellone._ She recognizes the words _junction_ and _machine_, though she has no idea what they mean: she knows a junction is a connection, a joining, so it may tell her something about the machine's function. _Ellone_ she does not recognize. Is this another descriptor, like _junction_? Is _ellone_ some sort of title, or a warning?

She is in her chambers puzzling over the words when it happens. A man is touching the machine and there is a big misty explosion and everyone in the room falls asleep. Later when they awaken the men closest to the machine have all had strange dreams, visions where they walked in someone else's head and watched the past.

Before Esora can do anything the word leaks out and the world explodes. There are some who will listen to the wisdom and guidance of their Ultimecia. However, there are others who do not want the machine touched. They think it is dangerous, a tool of demons and nightmares and things that shouldn't be unleashed into this world at all. But it does not become a war until the other sorceress comes in, bent on destroying the Junction Machine.

Esora has just found out who the other sorceress is, and she is amazed. The Sorceress Rinoa is old, older than Esora's mother would be. She is the longest living sorceress in the history of the world. She has lived for _ages_, for centuries, whatever strange powers pumping her veins and beating her heart as if she were still nineteen.

Rinoa has been silent all these years. Until now.

Sorceress Rinoa has joined with legions of warriors ascribing to an ancient code of conduct. The rogue sorceress calls them SeeDs and sends them across the land and through the stone valley to strike at Esora. Rinoa sends spells winging, full of wrath and power. So far Esora has withstood all of these, feeding the lands below with war. What she cannot take, her people can: men and women and children have rallied to the Ultimecia.

Rinoa's war reeks of desperation.

It is one last chance, one last strike before something terrible happens. Esora can sense it in Rinoa's spells, in the magics the other sorceress sends across stone to strike at her. Esora does not know what the _something terrible_ is, nor does she know how she has insulted the long-lived sorceress. But she will fight this drawn-out war and she will win. The land is her body and blood now, the air her magic, and she will breathe in dust and breathe out mist which will cover the others.

Esora is a rational being and she only wants to return to the Junction Machine, to her work and her research and dusty old papers and linens and books in other languages.

There was a fierce battle yesterday, a clashing between the two sorceresses. Rinoa's wings are a pearly white, tinged with sky-blue. Rinoa soars through the sky and is followed by flowers and feathers. Esora's wings are golden, not pale: a fierce dark gold laced with almost-black, a burnt sort of color. Esora trails nothing when she flies but every time she casts a spell you can see the runes in the air: her rune is that of a clock, an old one, striking the witching hour.

The land below her loves nothing more than battle between two sorceresses at their Limit. Sorceress Rinoa, pearly and translucent and lovely and fierce in her wake, black feathers, white feathers. And the Ultimecia, the Sorceress Esora, burnt copper and logic, eyes as cool as reason. Esora can send Rinoa away every time but the strain fills the air with magic thick as soup and things rain into the ground, flowers and mist and shards of glass.

Soon the land will be thirsty no more, for Esora will strike down the other Sorceress. Perhaps Rinoa's powers have waned over time, or Rinoa herself has. Esora can sense that Rinoa is powerful but that the powers are lost in the sense of desperation. They are almost done. Soon there will be one last fanatical clash. Esora will inherit Rinoa's powers as well and she will give them into the land that has served her so well.

There is a knocking on a door behind her and Esora turns, making the movement with her hands, opening the door from across the room. The space behind it is empty but as she watches a form appears, dark haired and clad in blue, the blue of midnight and stars. The figure raises its head, spilling dark hair. It is the Sorceress Rinoa.

The face before her is ageless. It is the eyes that tell all: they are alternately the eyes of an old woman long past her prime, and those of an innocent young girl. Rinoa's face is pale and blank, void of any emotion, other than those eyes. They are brown, coffee-brown, earth-brown, but they burn with a misty grey light. Sorceress Rinoa's eyes are eerie.

Esora is not frightened, only curious. Rinoa cannot defeat her; the other sorceress's powers are drained. Perhaps Rinoa is here to make a bargain.

Ultimecia, Rinoa says, and the voice is as loud in her head as a waking voice would be.

Esora realizes that Rinoa does not know her real name.

Rinoa takes one step closer and Esora begins to feel the aura of her magic. Sorceress Rinoa's magic has always felt familiar to her in a way and she does not know why or how. She does not know why or how Rinoa has lived this long, either. Perhaps she is one of Rinoa's descendants.

Rinoa continues to walk and Esora sees how unsteady her steps are. The rogue sorceress is stumbling as if exhausted. Her eyes are burning just as strong and just as uncannily as the very first day Esora looked into them, but her body is -

Esora realizes suddenly how very _thin_ the Sorceress Rinoa has become. Originally she looked like any normal woman would but now she looks like she is only bones. Her skin is not wrinkled and sagging but _tight_ against her, pulled tight like leather across the head of a drum. Her skin is fiercely holding her together.

Sorceress Rinoa is dying.

She comes into the room and stops in the center, swaying a little; her eyes close involuntarily, and Esora can almost feel the nausea as Rinoa adjusts her body's balance. The eyes flicker like fireflies.

Rinoa sees her looking, for she says, "Yes. My body is broken."

Her voice is _normal._ Esora has heard it calling spells across the many lands and miles between them but then it was always the voice of a Sorceress. Now it is only a woman's voice. An indigo voice, Esora decides. Dark but not deep. The voice is hoarse and it carries a strange accent from the hoarseness, which does not let Rinoa's words always come out correctly. She has a hard time with hard sounds, k's and t's, mostly.

Rinoa smiles, the sort of smile that makes Esora question her sanity. "This is the gift," she says, "of karrying so many women within me. The powers let me live for ages as long as they are not used. But using them -"

She raises her arm, and Esora decidedly does-not-gasp, but she wants to. The arm is gaunt, a child's arm, a scrawny tomboy's arm, something that belongs to a skeleton.

"Using them eats away at me from the inside," Rinoa says, and cackles. Like bleach, like acid. Eats away at all parts of me. It fed on my body until there was nothing left: then it ate my mind.

Our mind.

There is not much left to feed it now.

"What do you want?" Esora asks. Her voice is neither kind nor unkind. It is merely impassioned, a scholar's voice. A grey voice. "Why have you come?"

"I want to see it."

-

So Esora takes the dying, crippled Sorceress Rinoa into the chamber of the Junction Machine Ellone. Rinoa is still laughing. Sometimes it is the giggle of a child, othertimes it is the cackle of a crone. Every time her body fails her and she stumbles, slips, spills, Rinoa laughs. It is like a game to her. Esora is beginning to see the madness through her eyes.

But then they walk into the room and Rinoa stands straight for the first time.

She takes a few smooth, soft steps and lays her hands on it.

"Don't touch it," Esora says, her voice an imperial command.

"I can touch it," Rinoa says in a soft voice. The softness is worse than the laughter was. The soft voice has no accent.

"Touching the Machine activates something which causes deep sleep, paralysis, and hallucination."

"No," Rinoa says, still soft, still lucid. "Only when you touch here, or here." The gestures are soft and controlled and were it not for the paper-thin skin and bone-hands Esora would think that Rinoa was faking death. "And it's not hallucination."

Esora bites her tongue until it actually bleeds because she does not want to ask but then she says through the blood: "Then what is it?"

She did not want to ask, oh she did not, but she _did._ Sorceress Rinoa's magic has driven her mad, perhaps. For Esora the madness is in the curiosity, the desire for more knowledge. Especially in history. That is the passion.

But Rinoa is running her hands over the machine, a soft smile gracing her ageless face. "Hi, Ellone," she whispers. "I had to come and say goodbye."

Esora is shocked and excited and worried all at once. Ellone is a title? A name? A _person?_

"I know you're in there," Rinoa says, pacing a slow circle around the machine, touching only some places and not others. "There's something of you here. And I needed to see it - to feel it."

You know how it turns out, don't you. Mistress of Time. You know how everything happens. Did you always know? Did you know there was no choice?

Esora's eyes are following Rinoa's every movement, recording them so that she can play them back later and try to replicate what the woman is doing. This is the key to understanding the Machine, she realizes. I can't let Rinoa leave!

"Oh, I won't leave, dearie," Rinoa says softly. The soft is threatening now: I won't leave. I'll always be with you.

Rinoa bends down and plants a soft kiss on the machine, her bone-hands tightening in an embrace. "Bye, Elle," she whispers. "I loved you. Squall loved you. Edea loved you, we all did. I couldn't go without telling you that - even this little piece of you."

Rinoa then stands up straight and turns to Esora.

You know what I'm here for, she says.

Esora is surprised. Rinoa is dying, yes, but not in the immediate sense, not in the next-couple-of-minutes sense.

No, the other woman says sharply, I'm not. But I don't have the power left to fight you again. I can't keep you from Ellone when the acid is eating me alive. It's eaten everything I have. I'm spent.

You can't just give the powers away willingly, Esora replies. It has to be death.

Bah! Rinoa is grinning again, full of teeth and macabre cheer. A fairy-tale, a bed-time story for the witching hour. How do you think I got my first powers?

Your first?

Ah, yes. The grin levels into a thin, proud smile. The first of four, in total. Four reservoirs of power. And I'm giving it all to you.

Esora is hesitant. But the powers are eating you, she says. They've killed you.

How do you think I lived this long? It's different, Rinoa insists. I survived centuries using only my own powers, and the other three lived in my bloodstream and my bones and my organs and nourished me with long life. As long as you do not try to draw more than is your share, you can live forever.

It's knowledge, Ultimecia. And knowledge is a power that nourishes: it does not drain.

Esora pauses. Knowledge?

Yes, Rinoa whispers. Oh, yes. I promise.

Rinoa holds her hands out before her, palms up to the air. The hands are shining with a shimmering crystalline aura that Esora recognizes. Her own hands begin to shine burnished gold. She looks down into her palms as if trying to read her own fortune, but nothing is revealed.

Esora takes her hands and lowers them down, above Rinoa's, palm to palm. They touch, as if sealing a portal, sealing a bargain.

There is a flash -

-

and she is standing before a wall made entirely of mirrors

_what? Where is-_

Each mirror is reflecting some young child. They are all young girls with dark hair and soft faces and easy smiles. She looks behind herself: there is no one. Only mist.

_Rinoa?_

One young girl looks up at the call.

The movement alerts her and her head snaps up. The mirror wall goes for miles and miles and miles, it stretches as far as she can see.

_A Time Line, child. The Line is a Circle. The Circle is a Spiral. The Circle is Unending._

Do you see the reflection yet?

She screams.

-

"Who are the four women?" Rinoa's voice comes out clearly, falling from the mist around her like acid rain.

'I was born with one and given three."

It is a child's nursery rhyme: a little girl is skipping rope. The girl's hair is burnt copper, a hazy red. It is cut against her chin and flips outward in a smiling curl. There is another girl, with golden hair tucked strictly behind her ears. Gold and bronze: precious metals.

"Born with one and given three."

The bronze-head is skipping to the rhyme and the blond one is watching, counting her steps.

"One was crazy, set her free."

"No, Seff," the blond says, "you did that wrong. It's two jumps."

The copper one sticks out her tongue and continues.

"One was mother's, given me."

She stumbles a bit, but stops and takes a deep breath, readjusting the rope. It is too long for the child's short legs so she has wound it around her hands twice.

"And inside mother's, I found thee."

The copper one stops a moment in thought, and then looks up at the blond. "Quisty, what does 'thee' mean? What did she find?"

"Matron told me it means 'you'," says the blond.

"Eeeeeew, that's not my name!"

"No, dummy, you like you anybody you the word you, not you like Seffie you. But you doesn't rhyme. Matron says it's a really old word."

"Yoo don't say it right."

"And _you_ say it like a baby."

_Born with one and given three -_

_One was crazy, set her free - _

_One was mother's, given me._

_And inside mother's, I found - thee - _

"And inside thee was already - me." Rinoa's voice finishes off the chant.

Do you see the reflection yet?

-

"Momma got sick."

The little girl has long dark-black onyx-black hair. It shines like a precious metal but not even silver is this colorless.

The little girl is talking to a mirror because no one will talk to her. Everyone is busy caring for Momma now, but even before that, they wouldn't talk to her. Her Momma is important and so everybody revolves around her. Momma is a Sorceress and she is the Ultimecia and everybody loves and worships and serves her and the child is always left alone with mirrors and glass and dusty rocks pulled up from the lands outside.

The mirror has been her friend since she learned how to speak. She sees faces in the mirror. They are all little girls with dark hair and soft faces and easy smiles. They never talk back to her but they will listen as she talks to them. They are always surrounded in mist.

They only come out when she is alone.

She is telling this girl, now. The girl has dark hair, cut close around her chin. Her eyes are bright and her skin is sun-darkened. She looks out of the glass with a sympathetic smile.

"Momma got sick," she repeats, "and they think she's gonna Die."

Death to the child is something out of a fairy-tale, something where someone goes to a far-off land of happiness, leaving everybody behind. The child cannot understand why everyone is so sad. It's sad that Momma is leaving, she agrees, but Momma will be happy. And when they all Die, they will join Momma in the land of happiness. And maybe with Momma gone, someone will pay attention to her: someone other than a mirror.

"If she dies, I get Momma's magic," the little girl whispers to the mirror. This is a Big Person Secret that she's not supposed to know, but Momma told her yesterday. Momma thinks she is dying.

A nursemaid comes to the door. The child is talking to the mirror again. This child is so - uncanny. She's not fit at all to be a Sorceress. But no one argues with the Ultimecia.

"Come along, child. Your Momma wants you."

The child glances back, once, at the mirror. She knows the nurse can see nothing; but she can. Her own magic. The girl is still there, looking back at her, the mirror at an impossible angle.

Do you see the reflection yet?

-

- and suddenly, her face is in every mirror, every mirror she ever used to talk to -

She is back at the mirror-wall, which stretches as far as she can see and sense and understand. Everywhere that there once was anything is now only the mirror-wall. She is doing math in her head: the mirrors represent all space.

_If a particle exists, then the total probability of finding it somewhere in all space has to be one: the integral of its probability function over all space is unity._

One is unity. Then what is more than one?

She has blinked, and the wall is full of the nameless dark-haired girl-children. Some have short hair, some long; some have pale skin and some dark skin. All are different and yet all are eerily the same.

_The probability of being _somewhere_ is one, if you exist._

They are trying to talk to her, their eyes wide in a macabre unblinking stare.

Do you understand yet? Do you see the reflection yet?

She takes a step back. Her spine is steeped in terror, a shiver between her shoulder-blades that feels strangely like wings.

_If you look everywhere, you _will_ find the particle somewhere._

One child makes a gesture and all the others turn to watch.

**Let us start with Edea**, the girl says.

_Who is Edea?_

Child, Mother, Crone.

_If light is bent, you can see multiple images of the same thing._

**Born with her own powers, Edea starts as one sorceress. She then inherits powers from Ultimecia. Let us define these powers as _x_, such that Edea's powers will be (1+x).**

What is the value of x? It sounds like a math problem, a puzzle. Algebra for the Insane.

**Edea is briefly possessed by Ultimecia, making her powers (1+2x). She then passes her powers, and Ultimecia's presence, over to the Sorceress Rinoa. Her powers are now (2+2x).**

Her mind is spinning. _There is a limitation to the number of things you can know about any particle. Where it is, or where it is going. Not both._

-

"Why," Esora gasps out, "why are you doing this?"

Don't you see, Rinoa cries, a gleeful wail. If you remain yourself, you stay sane. You figure out Ellone's secret. You have your full mind and your full powers. And we can't beat you. I can't beat you with four sets of powers and centuries of years. You're too strong.

But I have acid. I have bleach.

You were right, Ultimecia - it _is_ me who drives us into madness. We take the plunge. I push us both over the edge: I grab you around the waist and _jump_.

Because when you're mad, you can't control yourself. Then you lose and we win.

"Who is _you?_" Esora is for the first time in her life sorely afraid. "And who is _we?_"

-

"Hyne, Rinoa," he whispers around their matched lips, "I love you."

She kisses him back, harder, trying to show her own emotions wordlessly. Their touching lips are forming words of their own in some other language, never still for an instant. Their tongues are touching, dancing.

His hands are all over her, and hers on him. The undeniable sensation of skin on skin.

"You - light me on fire," he says, and pauses. "Why do I say these things to you? I sound so stupid."

"Be my Knight," she whispers. "You don't have to speak at all."

His touch is lighting her on fire, both his hands and his body and his mind, all at once, and she gasps as they join, and he -

_so you'll find me._

So long ago.

The years have been so long and so empty without him.

_You should be sleeping, my love. Tell me what you're dreaming of._

-

The mirrors are blinking now, between the girl-faces and the face of her mother on her death-bed, the croaking crone, the face of the other sorceress she has fought, the face of the Junction Machine -

Who would have known that light could bend in the mist? Does mist reflect?

**Rinoa's powers become (2+x) as Ultimecia leaves. Rinoa then inherits Adel: (3+x). **

She is not listening: she is looking for all the particles in the system, because the probability of finding them _has_ to be one, the particles _have_ to be unity -

The voice continues. **Rinoa then gives her powers to you. You are one Sorceress, so we have (4+x).**

Two, she whispers. My mother.

Child, Mother, Crone.

**Ah.**

The girls all look at each other and giggle, and it echoes in the mist like birdsong.

**So after receiving everything from Rinoa, your powers will be (5+x).**

**You then Compress Time and give them back to Edea. **

**But! **The girls are giggling again, and it sounds like cackling. **So!**

Esora is still looking for the particles. They appear to her to be pieces of glass. There is a long cut across her palm, and a jagged one on her wrist. The particles are not _helping._

**Esora! **The voice calls. **Answer the question! What is x?**

_Tell me what you're dreaming of._

**X is how much power you have. How much magic. Say it!**

Solve the equation. See the reflection. Find the particles. _One is unity._

"X equals X + 5," Esora says, out loud.

**Good.**

-

"She's not ready," comes the voice from inside the room.

The little girl stops. Her onyx hair swishes across her face. She wishes it were longer, like Momma's.

"It doesn't matter." This is Momma's voice. "She'll be ready enough." Momma's voice has withered, like dead flowers with no rain. It used to sound like birdsong but now it grates all nasty-dead against her poor dying throat.

"But she's - she's uncanny," the other voice repeats. "She stares in mirrors all day. She can't do a simple spell. She's not ready to be the Ultimecia."

This is not true. She does not stare into the mirrors, she talks with them, does her magic within them. And it's certainly not all day. She goes out to the old garden which is dead and dying like Momma and digs up rocks and stones and bits and pieces and the pieces sing to her, steeped in a strange sort of ageless grace. It is like runes, a language only she can hear. Maybe that is uncanny but - she doesn't really know what the word means.

"She works her own kind of magic. She will be ready." Momma's voice, even withered, can still be hard as steel when it wants to be.

She walks into the room and ignores all the aunts who think They would be a better reservoir for Momma's powers. Momma makes a gesture with her hand and they all leave and the door closes, one-two-three.

Then Momma reaches over and touches her on the forehead and her world lights on fire. She suddenly realizes that Momma is withered and nasty-dying because she is burning, burning up with incandescent flame, and Momma is passing the fire on to her -

Later, when Momma's body has been wrapped for the pyre, she banishes all of the aunts who would try to wage war on her. Momma's raspy old voice in her head teaches her how to _kurse_ and so she _kurses_ them all, out of her land forever.

-

_X can't equal X + 5,_ she thinks. _This equation has no answer._

**No**, the little girl says. **The equation is approximately true _only_ if x is so large that 5 becomes meaningless when compared to it.**

_Five women,_ Esora thinks. _All meaningless when compared to the value of x._

**One is unity. And you are much, much greater than one.**

The powers are greater than the sum of their parts.

What is x?

-

She is in a grey, misty haze now, surrounded by the fog. Before her she can hear a clashing, the steely sound of metal on metal. She raises her hands and the fog lifts, like a vague curtain.

Two men are fighting. They are purely opposite, and yet mirror-image. One is bright as the sun, golden hair and Hyperion and temper all aflame like Firaga and Flare and glory. The other is dark, cool, stormy eyes and dark hair and no words save the elegant sweep of his blade. Each is trying to drown the other: either fire or water will win.

And yet the men are like two pieces of the same puzzle. They face off against each other like brothers. Each has a scar across his face, between the eyes. When put together the scars form an X. A Fire Cross of power. Two blades meeting. X marks the spot.

_X equals X + 5. All is negligible compared to the value of X._

She is watching them fight, but it is like watching through glass, or in a mirror. She knows both of these men like her own blood and body and land. Each has been her lover, her Knight; and yet each has fought against her, pierced her body with his blade. She cannot decide which Knight is Hers, and thus she cannot decide which one should win.

_I'm gonna tell you about my Romantic Dream!_ One calls, but she does not know which. Neither is Romantic: they are all blades and rivers and fire and storms. Sun and Squall. It's a lie. But it's all relative to X.

And suddenly the battle has grown, to immense proportions, and there are other people there, weaving in and out of the mists: friends becoming enemies. She knows all of them, but because she does not know who she is, she cannot reach out and greet them.

She is so many women, sometimes. Too many faces. Only three mirrors.

A shriek, again, cutting across the mist: and she realizes she does not recognize her own voice.

-

Esora is still musing, scanning the glass wall to try and find the particles.

_Light can behave as a particle or a wave. If light is bent, you can see multiple images of the same thing._

The wall is now covered completely in mist: each mirror identical, no longer a mirror; only a clouded piece of glass, hiding particles.

Unsolveable equation. Circular logic. The Circle is Endless.

"X equals X + 5," she repeats, as if it is a mantra. "X equals -"

and the particles fall into her hands -

_And X is greater than one. And One is Unity. This Circle is more than Unity._

but they are not particles at all, they're _knowledge_ -

Ellone is -

who Edea is -

Time -

(the nature of time, it's all the speed of light, reflected by mirrors.)

The Angel and the Lion, the entire story -

mist and feathers, white feather black feather, mirror-black, onyx-black

(greater than)

_Someday I'll tell you about my Romantic Dream!_

Time - there was a time once - once upon a time -

so you'll find me. (Who? Who is _we?_)

Compression - no, Kompression -

junction -

_You should be sleeping, my love. Tell me what you're dreaming of._

time. (It's always about Time.)

The Angel has Wings. Griever has fangs and claws like blades. Like shards of glass.

(mirrors). three of them. three faces.

_What Time Is -_

She is the Witching Hour. The clock, the Circle.

_When I land, will my eyes be closed, or -_

Her eyes open.

-

They are in a field of flowers, but the flowers are all shades of grey, and withered. There is a fierce storm around them, blowing up dead flower residue and feathers. White feathers, black feathers. Angel of Life, Angel of Death.

They are facing each other. One is Rinoa and one is Esora, but at this point, neither is sure which is which.

Don't _you_ see, Esora says. You may drive me mad, but I wouldn't know anything without you. I didn't know who Adel was before you came. I didn't know about Ellone before you came. I didn't know about Griever. I didn't even know what Time Compression was before you came.

You're the reason, Rinoa.

But I came to stop you! she cries, desperate. I'm the reason you _can't_ do it all, I'm the reason you fail!

You're also the reason I try.

_One is unity; we are one. And X is far, far greater than either of us._

"What does X equal?" Esora whispers, as Rinoa bows down, surrendering her body.

Sorceress Rinoa's war reeks of desperation. Her tears reek of vengeance.

_-_

_

* * *

_ _So, uh, yeah. _

_These last two movements have been on my computer since 02 January; I have been trying to deal with them and make sure they were as close-to-perfect as I could get. I was surprised at the reviews (esp Enkida's) who came close to guessing that there was more out there._

_OK, some acknowledgments: The child/mother/crone triad I borrowed and paraphrased from the Old Religion descriptions in Marion Zimmer Bradley's Avalon series (Mists of Avalon? I think), just cause I liked it, and I thought it fit. Most of the scientific-sounding lines are taken out of my notes from Modern Physics, direct notes from my crack-fiend of a professor. I've borrowed a line of lyric from Bjork and from Garbage. And I'm sure that I've borrowed some phrasings from Robin McKinley, because I always do (she is my own personal Goddess and if you haven't read anything of hers go! and pick up _Sunshine_ right now)._

_Everything else is mine cause I'm bloody awesome. Including my nifty-stupid mathematical proof._

_-_

**_Random blabberings imminent_**_; so if you are one of those who doesn't really care, please skip on down to the tasty little 'Review' button._

_I thought I had already said everything I had to say about Rinoa. _Sorceress_ tries to put it all together. However, having felt a little paranoid and crazy myself, it all ended up coming out in this; and I realized I had a great deal to say about Rinoa. _

_I've never really connected with Rinoa's character. Selphie and Irvine, though they can both be annoying, I absolutely love; and (as I have stated before) I think I pretty much _embody_ Quistis. But Rinoa always just kind of whined and looked all doughy and I didn't really like her all that much. But - wow - when she's insane, it all comes out. Rinoa has _potential.

_Plus I wanted to write something insane, totally nuts-o with lots of imagery but few conclusions. Explanations are overrated. I told Cendrillo this and then had a wild vehement urge to act on my own advice._

_I chose to deal only with Rinoa, Edea, and Esora, because I think they are an important little triumvirate of power there. Also, they are the only ones who ever had to cope with the weight of the powers defined as X above. _

_For Enkida, Re: Adel:_

_I am operating under the assumption that Adel was a madball, as insinuated in the game, only because she was a madball inherently and not because of Ultimecia. They didn't give me enough Adel to work with, other than the fact that she was an ugly manlike freakazoid who rules Esthar for six bazillion years and wants to eat Rinoa, crunch crunch. So other than a brief mention I have omitted her perspective. _

_(Granted, Adel would look like something like this: "...urrrr...aahhhh...BZZZZZZZT! POWERS! MMMM, TASTY SORCERESS. Thanks, Seifer. BZZZZZZZZT!" Because I can't take myself seriously anymore after writing 30 pages of _Mirrorfeather.

_I've tried to cover my ass by implying that Ultimecia makes Rinoa free Adel to eat _Adel's_ powers. As Laguna said: "She may be a sorceress, but after all, she was human." And Ultimecia is a power-hungry bizatch, in the end. _

_Plus there's something to be said about fate: does she do it only because she knows she did it in the past? Oooh, there's a doozy. How much of Ultimecia is acting on Rinoa's memories? Maaaan._

_And as for the value of X? X equals Ultimecia. X equals the madness. Thus, Ultimecia Madness. They are interchangeable._

_Apparently I like to write long notes. Cause this gigantic blather wasn't long enough._

_So there._

_Love,_

_seventhe_


End file.
